Policy Break: Facebook Edition

Facebook is really beginning to creep me out. It has suggested friends that I didn’t know anyone knew I was acquainted with. I don’t know what algorithms they have that figured this one out but it is a serious blow to any sense of slyness that I might have had. Next Facebook is going to have “people you might have causally flirted with at a bar.”

Linked in — on which I have three contacts — suggested for me an old boss who is in a different city and industry than any of my current connections, and would be extremely unlikely to know any of them. The only theory I’ve cooked up is that he perhaps searched for me at some point, and even though he made no attempt to actually link me, it retained that and spouted it to me.